


lonelier than this.

by outpastthemoat



Series: new testament [just more of the same 'verse] [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Depression, Fallen Castiel, Fluff, Future Fic, Human Castiel, M/M, Post Series, Singer Salvage Yard, Slow Build, Slow Burn, angsty fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:12:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Dean thinks that the strangest ghost he's ever encountered is the one that lives in his house, the one that wanders into the kitchen at night and drinks the last of the milk, the one that always places the empty carton back on the shelf of their fridge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lonelier than this.

  
_It doesn't get any lonelier than this_   
_And there's no place I can go_   
_Just the dusty corners that the shadows know_   
_Maybe this is as good as it's gonna get_   
_And I'll always be this way_   
_I'll just wander this world callin' out your name_   
_It doesn't get any lonelier than this_   


Sometimes Dean thinks that the strangest ghost he's ever encountered is the one that lives in his house, the one that wanders into the kitchen at night and drinks the last of the milk, the one that always places the empty carton back on the shelf of their fridge.

Cas has never been all that great at cleaning up his messes, no matter if the mess is leviathan or Dean's hollowed-out heart or the chaos he leaves in the kitchen, and it makes Dean wonder if angels just never learned to clean up after themselves, or if it's just that Cas is a slob; sometimes he wonders if Cas actually thinks of their house as a home, or only a brief shelter between motel rooms.

It's the little things Cas does that drives him up the walls, or really the little things Cas doesn't do at all: the unwashed dishes piling up in the sink for days, or the grime-covered bathroom mirror on which Dean occasionally uses the tip of his finger to leave a message that says  _THIS BATHROOM IS FILTHY GODDAMNIT CAS_ , because when he'd just written  _CLEAN ME,_  Cas had simply remarked that it seemed that the bathroom mirror had become self-aware.

Little things matter: this is a truth Dean holds close to his heart; after all, it's the little things that he's signed his life over to protect, and it's the little things he's supposed to have, now, in his own special slice of not-quite-paradise.  Little things matter, but some days Cas drifts through their house like one of the ghosts they still salt and burn, never saying a word. He'll stare straight through Dean, and it leaves a hollow, empty space in Dean's gut, the way Cas's eyes cut past him as though Cas can't see him at all, the way Cas slides away from a hand on his shoulder or a touch on his back as though Dean's presence is nothing more than a light rain, or a cloud of dust: something to be weathered, something that will be over soon enough, nothing to get worked up about. 

He shakes the empty milk carton in Cas's face the next morning, but Cas stares right through him.

"You're  _supposed_  to throw it away when you're done with it," Dean says, and Cas just blinks up at him, troubled.  "The trash can is  _right there_ _,_ it's  _easier_ than putting the goddamn carton back in the goddamn fridge, all you have to do is open the trash can and throw it in.  Are you even _listening_  to me, Cas?"

Only one thing registers, apparently.  "You're angry," he says, and then it's like he just cuts off, like a screen going blank, and that's the last thing Dean hears from him that day.

"Yeah, I'm  _angry,_ " he snaps at Cas, who just stands there, face frozen.  "You're not _listening_."  And even when Cas throws away the milk carton, it doesn't feel like Dean's won a battle.  It feels like he's losing in a war he's fighting for Cas's attention.  Affection.  Whatever.

He complains to Jody, who doesn't say anything but still manages to make him feel like shit for whining about something so trivial.  He complains to Sam, who doesn't get it, and complains back that Amelia makes macaroni and cheese with spinach for dinner and therefore Dean's complaints are invalid.

"I don't see what the problem is, Dean," Sam says.  "Okay- he's a slob.  Why are you so worked up about this?"

Dean's tried his damnedest to build a home for them both, but he figures it's impossible to make a home with someone who's not there; he can look around the rooms of their house and see nothing of Cas but the trail of muddy boot prints that start at one door and end at another.  You'd never know a soul lived here besides Dean: the books on the shelves are his, the knives hanging on the walls of the library are his, even the coat slung across the chair beside the kitchen table is his own, and some days he wants to knock down the walls  with all the force of his frustration.

He says as much to Sam over the phone, but Sam's only listening with half an ear.  Dean can hear Amelia in the background; he can pick up phrases like  _summer ceremony_ and  _English roses_ and  _Venetian_ _lace_.  

"So you're mad because he doesn't take care of his stuff?"

"Well, yeah, but it's  _more_  than that, okay?" Dean tells him.  "It's like he doesn't even care."

"Care about what?"

The house, Dean thinks.  Their life together.  What Dean wants.  But he doesn't know how to say those things to Cas, or even to Sam, so he settles for complaining about the way Cas never oiled the hinges of the front door like Dean's asked him to do ages ago, or the way Cas lets his clothes get ragged, doesn't care about ripping holes in new jeans or getting grease all over nice shirts.

"Look, Dean," Sam says finally, "neither of you put a whole of value on  _stuff_ , do you?  Does it really matter that much?"

But what Sam just doesn't get it: that's just not true at all.   Of course  _stuff_  matters.   _Stuff_ is what you've got to hold on to,  _stuff_ is what ties you down and keeps you steady, and Dean isn't going to stop worrying over it anytime soon because if Cas doesn't care about the little things, then what's going to keep him here?

He doesn't  _mean_  to snoop; it just happens.  He's checking the guns and loading up bags of rock salt in the Impala's false compartment, then he's slinging his duffle on top and letting the trunk slam shut.  Dean's itching to leave, anxious for the feel of the steering wheel under his hands and the rumble of the road under the wheels, and meanwhile Cas is spending far too much time getting ready: Dean's ready to be gone.  

He hovers impatiently by the front door, letting the keys dangle noisily from his fingers.  The water's running in the upstairs bathroom, and if it was Sam still locked in the bathroom he’d be shouting _you can finish braiding your hair in the car, princess_ , but it isn’t Sam, it’s Cas, and that means, of course, that Dean doesn't have any idea what to do with him: yeah, he's got Cas, but not the way he wants him to be.

So he settles for bellowing, “Hurry it  _up_ , Cas,” and then, as an afterthought, “Where’s your stuff?”

The tap shuts off, and Cas’s voice rumbles down the stairs.  “In my room,” he answers, and since Dean’s about to expire from restlessness he doesn't hesitate to stomp down the halls towards Cas's room.

But he hesitates, there by the door.  He hasn't been in this room since Cas recovered from the accident back in August.  Cas hasn't invited him.  What's he's about to do feels uncomfortably like snooping, even if he does have permission.  He's not sure he's supposed to see Cas's room: it's private.

He pushes at the knob, and the door swings open. Cas's duffle bag is right there by the door, but now that he's finally in Cas's room he can't help but look around. 

The furniture's just the same as Dean remembers: the old sagging bed, a dresser, a nightstand.  He's not sure what he'd been expecting.  Heaps of unwashed clothes, maybe, or empty cereal bowls everywhere, like a fraternity house he'd seen once on a hunt.  

But Cas's room is clean.  Freakishly so, considering it's Cas.  There's no trash, and not a thing is out of place.  The windows have been washed sometime recently.  The bed's even made up.  So why is Cas such a slob when it comes to the rest of the house? he wonders, but he shakes his head.  That's a mystery to puzzle over later, because the biggest difference is that Cas has  _decorated_ his room.

Cas has taken Bobby’s old room and made it his own.  There’s a row of plants lining the windows, ivy and geraniums and even an ugly lopsided cactus; there are rocks lining the top of the dresser, the kind Cas always comes home with after he goes on walks, and bird feathers.  There's even a nest.  

He’d been thinking, for whatever reason, that Cas didn’t really have stuff, at least not the way Dean does: He knows Cas has a rifle and a sawed-off shotgun and a set of knives he keeps wickedly sharp, a bag filled with rock salt and water bottles filled with holy water, jeans and shirts and even a plain black suit for playing dress-up, but Dean didn’t know that Cas keeps other things, too, things that aren’t useful or necessary or have any sort of purpose in his new life.  

There’s a rosary of dark-stained wooden beads laid across the nightstand, next to the keys and wallet and cell phone, there’s a battered pack of playing cards, a pack Dean recognizes because he’d given those cards to Cas after the accident, after teaching him to play Solitude, and a shoebox filled with all the cassettes Dean’s been loaning him, even though he’s fairly sure Cas doesn’t actually listen to music because he's never once caught him at it.  There’s a half-finished bag of sunflower seeds, a half-empty glass of water.  There’s a red wool blanket carefully spread across the foot of the bed to cover the worst of the tears in that ancient patchwork quilt they'd bought for Cas to use at a Salvation Army back in Lebanon.  

Cas had taken such care with his things, and it occurs to Dean that Cas has been turning his room into some sort of a sanctuary, a place to live all by himself and among his belongings in a way he never lives in any other room in their house: a place where Dean isn't welcome.  Like it's Dean's house, not  _theirs,_  even though technically that's true.  Like Cas doesn't want to share this stuff with him.  And it hurts.

Dean hears the bathroom door, and to cover his embarrassment before Cas can catch him going through his things, he grabs the duffle and shuts the door behind him.

But Dean’s distracted the whole hunt, with a strange sense of hopelessness tingling under his skin, and in the back of his mind he's caught between wondering at the fact that Cas does have  _stuff_ , after all, and the fact that Cas doesn't seem to give a damn about taking care of anything else.

And he’s not sure why he’s poking through Cas’s private places, he only knows that he wants to push down the door between them, because everything’s the same as it always has been, only different; he’s not sure of his footing, not sure of where he stands with Cas these days.

Sam sighs when Dean tells him this, long and slow over the line, the sound crackling in Dean’s ear.  “How are you so patient with him, Dean?”

Dean hesitates, but he already knows there’s only one answer he’s able to give.  “Cause I’ve got time,” Dean says.  “‘Cause he’s not going anywhere.”  

But he doesn’t tell Sam that sometimes he spends nights lying awake in his bed, wondering what would happen if he were to take Cas’s face in his hands on one of those silent morning, bringing it close to his own, leaving a kiss to linger on the corner of Cas’s mouth, and all before handing Cas his coffee and buttoning up his coat.  

He doesn’t tell Sam how there are certain places in Cas he’s desperate to reach, places Cas still won’t let him touch, all burrowed up inside alone, like the dreams that haunt him in his sleep; he doesn’t mention how he’s closer to Cas than he’s ever been before, closer than he’s ever come to being with another, how he still doesn’t have Cas as a constant in his life and in his arms despite all that.  How some days Dean  _misses_ him, even though he's right fucking there; how Cas may be living on earth with Dean, but his heart's somewhere else. 

But then again, Cas always manages to surprise him somehow.  That night as he’s washing clothes, unrolling the sleeves of his flannel shirts and turning out pockets, he’s forced to change his mind.

Dean picks up the next thing to throw in the wash, and he very nearly drops the pair of jeans he’s picked up when he realizes they’re not his own, but Cas’s, instead, impossibly: these jeans could be no one else’s but Cas’s, faded as they are into softness, with telltale frayed fabric on both knees, and pockets filled with things, because Cas may have chosen to stay on earth but that seems to have been the last decision he’d been capable of making, and he can’t be kept, not by Dean or God or any other power across the universe, from picking up anything and everything he thinks might be  _useful_ off the ground.  

It’s not like Dean’s never handled Cas’s clothes before, though he hadn’t been the one to teach Cas about the benefits of regular laundry days; it had been Sam who had taken Cas in hand and taught him how to scrub out dirt and bleach out bloodstains and sew buttons back on his flannel shirts on one of those first few days, when Dean hadn’t been able to so much as look Cas in the eye.  But it’s funny, now that Dean thinks about it, that Cas’s jeans have found their way amongst Dean’s mud-crusted socks and tattered undershirts and faded boxers with the stretched-out elastic in the waistbands.

Probably it’s strange because Dean can’t quite figure out how those jeans got here in the first place.  Cas maintains a fierce and determined catalog of his personal property; he’ll consent to share the last inch of Dean’s toothpaste, the spiteful bastard, but he won’t let Dean borrow his shirts, assuming that Cas’s are are only clean ones left in the house, and even though he can't be forced to clean the bathroom, he doesn't leave his shoes by the door or shed his clothes in small piles down the hall to the bathroom the way Dean does every evening.  

Cas’s things, Cas maintains, are  _Cas’s things_ , and Dean’s found out the hard way that he doesn’t forgive or forget liberties taken with his personal property. 

But here they are, anyway, Cas’s jeans performing an intricate dance with the sleeves of Dean’s flannel shirt, so Dean grabs a trashcan and turns out the pockets, waiting for the inevitable post-hunt debris of graveyard dirt, gravel, and mud to fall out, mixed with whatever else Cas has left in his pockets.  

He’s not wrong about the debris; dirt comes crumbling out and into the trashcan.  But he’s not expecting the contents of Cas’s pockets to leave him feeling achy, though they do.

There’s a handful of small rocks, someone’s lost key to a bicycle lock, a wheat penny and three quarters.  There’s a beer cap - Dean’s brand, which mean it’s Cas’s brand, too; he takes his cues from Dean about food, generally.  There’s a set of tags, the kind that ought to go around a dog’s collar, a tag that says  _IF FOUND PLEASE CALL 605-456-2344_.  Cas is always a hoarder of strangers' lost items.

And there, slowly wearing through the denim of his back right pocket, there’s Cas’s wallet.  

Dean thinks about throwing most of this crap out, but only for a minute; they’re Cas’s things, and he’d know, probably.  So instead he picks up the change, the rocks, the tag and the key, and leaves them on the shelf by the washing machine.  And he means to tuck Cas’s wallet in his own back pocket for safekeeping, but somehow along the way he finds himself opening it up and looking through the contents.

He doesn’t think there’s much to Cas’s wallet; it feels slim in his hand.  There are a few crumpled bills inside; a credit card, a driver’s license - Cas’s face, but not his name; and insurance cards that are about as real as the rest of Cas’s human identity, specially drawn up by Charlie.  And there’s something tucked away inside a pocket; Dean knows he shouldn’t but he pulls it out anyway and  _oh_.

He’s never thought of Cas as a sentimental sort of guy.  Or at least, not the same sort of  _sentimental_  that Dean’s always been for objects, tokens: his father’s leather jacket that he’d carried over his shoulders for years, the amulet from Sam he’d worn over his heart, the ‘67 Impala that’s been his home and haven and baby for as long as he can remember.  It’s never seemed likely to Dean that Cas would be the same way about these kinds of things; after all, Cas may be mortal now, but he’s still far from human.

But here’s evidence to the contrary.

Dean tucks it away back inside Cas’s wallet.

The house is quiet, but when he’s dragging his bag of laundry into his bedroom, he hears the quiet ruffling noises that means Cas is in his room, and he pauses just outside Cas’s door.

Dean stands there, feeling awkward and hating it, but he doesn’t know if he wants to knock - if he  _should_ knock - because, all right, Cas likes his privacy but things ought to be easier between them.  It shouldn’t be this hard to gain access to Cas, alone in his room.  

He knocks anyway, despite telling himself not to.  The soft ruffling noises go silent.  “Cas?”

“Dean?"

He waits a moment, but Cas doesn’t appear to be responding.

“Well, can I come in?” he asks.

The door opens. Cas squints up at him.  “Yes?”

He hands the wallet over.  “You left your crap in my laundry,” he says, and Cas accepts it, turning away, and he moves away from the door.  Dean watches from the door as he carefully sets it down on his bedside table.  

He doesn't mean to say anything about it.  He does anyway.  "You kept that napkin," he says, but it comes out like a question.  "That stupid thing I drew on."

Cas looks wary.  He shuffles on his feet.  "Was I not supposed to?"

 "I just didn't think you would," Dean says, and there must be something terrible written across his face, because Cas moves towards him with concern, and before he can really understand what's happening Cas is cautiously wrapping his arms around Dean's shoulders.

It takes a moment before he can move, but then his arms are coming up quick and fierce, hanging on to Cas's shirt.  He'd known going it that this would be difficult, that even after all this time, the hardest part is always getting through to Cas.

"Though you'd never keep a thing I'd give you," he says, soft, into Cas's hair, cold against his cheek.

 "Why wouldn't I?" Cas asks. "It was from you.  That's why I kept it."

“Never knew you were such a sap,” he says, but his throat goes tight.

“Well, I didn’t know either."

And maybe it's easier to confess things into the shoulder of Cas's blue flannel shirt than it is to say anything to his face, but Dean can say it, finally.  "Sometimes it feels like you're not really here. Sometime you make me feel like shit."

Cas turns and buries his head in the crook of Dean’s neck.  

“I don’t mean to,” he says, his voice muffled by Dean’s hair.  “I never meant to.  I  _want_  to be here-”  Dean can feel him sigh, between his arms. "But sometimes I can't.  It's too much."

"What it?"

" _Caring."_  

And yeah, Dean knows it, better than anyone.  He even knows how it feels, wanting to be somewhere else, somewhere far away, but he’s never been on this side of it before, this leaving that’s not really leaving, and he’s never known how it can hurt.  Why has it taken him so long to realize that's when Cas needs him the most, these days when Cas is distant and cold and almost imperceptibly unhappy?

He wants to take care of Cas, but he can’t take care of what's really hurting him  Cas isn’t exactly broken - but Dean can’t fix him, either; all he can do is be here during the worst of it, and weather out the storm at Cas’ s side.

It's weeks later before Dean notices that something's changed.  

He' about to yell at Cas for leaving his clothes all over the house when it occurs to him he’s never had to yell at Cas for this before.

And after that, Dean’s suddenly finding his crap everywhere: Cas’s rocks, lining the windowsills in every room, Cas’s books scattered on the bookshelves and between volumes of lore and Dean’s thriftstore paperbacks, Cas’s filthy boots thawing out and leaving a spreading pile of mud and melted ice all over the kitchen floor.  Cas’s jacket, hanging from the back of a kitchen chair, Cas’s gloves on the countertop, Cas’s ragged gray t-shirt half-buried under the cushions on the couch.

The jar Cas left by the washing machine, filled with buttons; the dirt that Cas collects in his pockets forming a heap on the kitchen table, along with anything else he finds curious and brings them home to for Dean to look over.

And when Dean rips a gash in his favorite shirt, he watches bemusedly as Cas rescues it from the trashcan.  It could just be Cas and his penchant for saving lost things, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  

Maybe it's Cas being sentimental.  "Don't throw it out," Cas says.

"It's just a shirt, Cas," Dean answers, gruff. "Doesn't mean anything."

Cas turns it over thoughtfully in his hands, examining the torn sleeve, the hole in the breast pocket. "I liked this shirt."

"Fine," Dean says, rolling his eyes. A shirt, out of all the things for Cas to take an interest in. "Keep it. Use it as a rag. Use it to clean the damn kitchen."

"We can fix it," he says, and all Dean can do is stare at him. "I bet we can."

 

 

 


End file.
